It’s really difficult to choose your own birthday gift. Sometimes surprises are better. So it was two weeks from the day when K offered me either a camera or an oven for my birthday that I finally picked my new Sony NEX 3. In between got lot of advice from facebook and twitter folks. There are a lot of Canon fans out there. Finally chose the Sony, my original choice after two trips to Sony shops. Two to Croma. Always a bad idea if you don’t know much about what you want to buy. Got side tracked at the last moment by a new Sony point and shoot with Deepika Chopra’s photo at the Bandra Sony Shop before I finally picked the NEX 3 to K’s relief. The clincher? The defocus function.
Played around with it at home last night. As K said, ‘enjoy your new toy’. We went to Candies for breakfast. The best place to try out a new camera. Food. and a holiday resort-like feeling. It was rather crowded downstairs. There was no cappuccino downstairs and K went upstairs in search of her cappuccino.
She called me up and we discovered the lovely section upstairs including a place where they serve food. All empty. Custom made for my friend Rahul who never gets served at Candies. Very beautifully designed. And the coffee here was much better according to K.
I discovered the pitfalls of having a ‘real’ camera. One of the counter girls, who has been seeing me for years, asked me not to take photos when I shot the cup cakes downstairs which are now the blog header. I got really irritated and asked her if it’s a new rule. Rather painful given the number of times I have romanced the food at Candies with my camera on the blog. And the number of times I have defended the place against people who get frazzled by the crowd there. Anyway I soon forgot the sour note as I headed out to the Candies Sky Garden and shot the bright colours all around.
And then I got a call from the guy at Sony who wanted to come for a demo. I must say I was really impressed given that it was Sunday and that I bought the camera just a day back. He came over and we discovered the camera together as I gave instructions to Banu on what to cook. Between the two of us we managed my doiposto ilish very well.
And here’s dinner. Indoors with two 100 watt bulbs. Garlic, pine nuts, cheese and basil pounded in my Chiang Mortar and pestle and drenched in olive oil from Ranjit’s basket for pesto. Soma’s Michigan Italian salami tossed in a pan, Ranjit’s Italian spaghetti added to it and then pesto mix with a touch of salt. Won over the non spaghetti loving, creamy pasta loving K too.
And this is just the beginning folks and thanks K for insisting that I pick this.
Reminded me of a chubby spoilt eight year old who made his Dad buy him a Yashika SLR at the Dhaka Airport because his Dad had a Pentax. He needed to have his own. Same trip where the fat kid also got a Casio Digital watch and would then keep calling out the time every half an hour at class.
